This invention relates to an apparatus for the continuous drying of textile fabric, and more particularly, relates to an improvement in a textile fabric dryer of the alternating flow type.
Alternating flow textile fabric dryers are known in the art. This type of dryer is characterized by having a mechanism for continuously carrying fabric through the dryer, and an air flow arrangement in which heated air is alternately directed toward the fabric from opposite sides thereof as the fabric is moved through the dryer. In one well-known commercially available dryer of this type, the fabric is supported as it moves through the dryer housing by an open-mesh conveyor belt. The air is alternately directed toward the fabric from above and below, in such a way that the air flows downwardly through the fabric and through the underlying open-mesh conveyor belt when the air is directed from above, and periodically, when the air is directed from below, the fabric is lifted from the conveyor belt to permit free shrinking and bulking of the fabric.
In this known type of dryer, the air flow is directed in an alternating manner by means of dampers of the hinged door type. The hinged damper door is moved in a reciprocating manner to direct the flow of air first above and then below the fabric. Because of the relatively high air flow rates used in this type of dryer and the rapid reciprocating motion of the damper parts, this type of damper arrangement is relatively expensive to maintain and somewhat complicated to control.